Strange Dreams -Chapter 6

(Next Morning)

Elmerin looked up from where he was getting things ready for breakfast. "Hey, Sky, you're up early. I was about to get Nera up."

"Could you wait a bit?" Sky rubbed their face. "I had a weird dream. I'm wondering what it means."

"Dreams are more the priests' category. Or maybe certain mages."

"Mom was a priest. I'm pretty sure you were one too, not just targeted for recruitment." Sky sighed at Elmerin's glare. "I'm not going to bother you about it, it's your business. But I think you're just fine to discuss dreams with."

Elmerin swallowed his anger -his issues with the priesthoods were not Sky's fault -and gestured for them to go on.

"We're all in the orc room, the one we were in yesterday. Nera casts Focused Heal for you instead of Group Heal like she actually did. So when ducking the general orc, I fell a different way in the dream than I did in real life. He got a good hit in on my back before you intervened. You wound up using several Earth Spikes, but some of them had to come up through the other orc corpses and weren't that effective. Then you used Ice Lance.

"Falchan and Drysia gave you the same argument about getting the prizes from the corpses. Since you moved me over to the wall for Nera to heal me, we didn't realize there were magic stones or that they were taking them all for themselves until they had most of them. I mean, you're supposed to at least tell your party members, even if it's finds them gets them! So that was another argument, that you cut short.

"When they hit the trap, Drysia took a nasty blow to her shoulder. Kres-" Sky's mouth quirked "-unsurprisingly was less than sympathetic. Nera was in the middle of healing it when you yelled Ripple was telling you the goblins were coming. "

"I was using Ripple in a labyrinth? Not Echo? Ripple doesn't work well underground."

Sky shrugged. "Ripple's what you used in my dream. When did you learn Echo? Nevermind, you probably don't want those two to know.

"But we barely had enough time to get in any kind of defensive position. Nera was trying to maintain a defense shield and finish healing Drysia, and sucking at both, and Falchan's Immovable Mass talent doesn't work as well if he's not anchored. 

"And then the sorcerer showed up at the tail end of the horde. But he wasn't as badly infected. His horns and one set of arms were somewhat smaller, and his skin wasn't as dark."

Elmerin was frowning deeply, his eyes closed, his chin resting on folded hands. "Then what?"

"The sorcerer attacked. It aimed for you first, probably because you're the only attack-magic user. You tried to fight it, and showed a level of power that, frankly, I don't think you're actually capable of."

"Thanks." Elmerin's voice was dry.

"I'm not saying you're weak!" Sky winced. "But there's a lot of Zircons with higher mana levels than you, and most Topazes know more higher-level spells than you by the time they start working on their qualifications for Emerald. Your knowledge of how to use what you have is much more versatile, but your ability is low."

Inwardly, Elmerin smiled. Sky was very observant, hence their popularity as a scout. They weren't easy to fool. "So what happened next?"

"Well, I was distracted, and one of the goblins managed to get a sneak attack in on me and stab through my gambeson. In fact-" Sky frowned "-right where you pointed out the rip yesterday. Meanwhile, some of the bigger goblins had gotten around behind Falchan and were attacking him that way. Nera couldn't keep up her shield anymore and Drysia was trying to defend her left-handed while backing them both up to the door of the safe room. I couldn't even see Kres, it was such a mess. The goblin sorcerer spit out something to you about how all your friends had fallen and you may as well just give up. And you-"

Sky paused and looked at Elmerin searchingly. "You said that the goblins would regret it when you died… and looked almost mad while saying it. But you can't go mad, right? 

"I was losing blood fast and the goblins were swarming. I didn't hear what you said next, but you threw out something that grew into two large kind-of spheres, one big and one small. They landed, and I heard you laugh and say 'that'll do'."

"I lost sight of you, but the dream ended shortly after that."

Elmerin contemplated what he should say. Telling Sky the possible truth behind the dream was out of the question; secrets were best kept if only one knew them. But this was too intense and detailed to just wave off as a dream of fear.

"What do you mean, not quite spheres?"

"They weren't smooth. They had multiple flat faces, each marked with something."

Pretending to reach into an item bag, Elmerin pulled an object out of his item box. "Did it look like this?"

Sky looked at the sphere with twenty flat faces, each marked with a number. "The big one looked like this, but the smaller one didn't have as many flat spots."

"It's a type of dice piece. The style is something the Summoned brought with them. They were apparently used in some types of convoluted story-telling games back in their worlds. They're useful if you need something more complex than the usual four- and six-sided dice." Elmerin put it away. "Although I keep that one because it's made from green sunstone, and it was a gift." He paused, getting his thoughts in order.

"But your dream. That dream… was a could-have-been, a timeline that might have been woven, but now will not be." He smiled humorlessly. "It could be Nera's instinct to use Group Heal had a cascading effect. It'd be worthy of one of the Summoned if it was." The last line was slightly sarcastic, as Elmerin often was when talking about the Summoned outside of teaching mode. "And no, I don't know why you had such a dream; that's supposed to be my skill." He grinned, though it didn't reach his eyes.

"I've heard high concentrations of corrupted magic can affect people even if they don't suffer magic overload," Sky said thoughtfully. "Or high levels of Bolat energy -El, do you think someone may have brought in a Bolat-energy-infused crystal to seed a dungeon core? The amount of infected monsters and how much they were infected was a bit much this far before Bolat's visit, according to the books. Corrupted magic pooling doesn't explain how bad it is."

Elmerin frowned in thought. "No, Bolat crystals aren't found east of the Miskel mountain range, the farthest border of the territory conquered by the-" he snorted "-'Demon King'. They'd have to go through the Crimson Seps Cult territory or through the Miskel and Kirken mountains -and Korrum's king has his forces patrol as much of the latter inside the borders as he can."

Sky looked puzzled, then startled. "Right, I forgot Trestia covered that up. Someone took out the Seps when I was little. Mother was on the investigation team. But with the cult occupying the Hillbalt region, other forces had kept out of there, so the kingdom suppressed that it'd happened- El?"

Elmerin had a couple of his journals out and was frowning at the contents. At Sky's query his head snapped up. "What?" He shook himself. "Do they know what happened?"

"Not exactly; they only saw the aftermath. Mother said judging from the signs, there had to be at least one priest, one mage, and one warrior. But there couldn't have been too large a group or they would have left more traces." Sky furrowed their brow. "I remember her saying she thought it might be a family, since the mana residues all felt similar, almost the same. But every camp, every lodge, every hideout, even their deep reserves were smashed and everyone within was killed. The only place relatively intact was a warehouse at the main lodge inscribed with circles and signs to hold living things in suspension -Mother said they're often used on ships for cattle and horses. That's where the children were." 

Sighing, Elmerin scribbled briefly in a third journal, then put all three books in an item bag. "Great. Just great."

"El?"

"Nothing." Elmerin rubbed his face. "I'm sure that the party responsible didn't think at the time that by wiping the Crimson Seps out, they'd leave that area open for something more dangerous to come through. Like a larger and stronger Bolat crystal than any they would have been able to smuggle in otherwise. If someone did put one down here to seed a core, that would definitely explain the number of monsters we've seen, as well as the Sapphire-level orc and goblin."

"El, what?!"

"Get Nera up, then I'll get Kres."

Sky was getting frustrated at whatever Elmerin was clearly not telling him. "El-"

"It's a case of pick your bad event. If they hadn't been wiped out, ten years from now the Seps Cult would have gained enough strength to come out of hiding and started massacring adventurers."

*******

Characters in this chapter:

Elmerin

Kres

Drysia

Nera Faunford

Sky

Falchan Cothmore

Spells in chapter:

Earth Spikes: Spikes of stone or hardened earth.They are usually anchored to the surface they are created from. Summoned most commonly from the ground, but can be summoned from other surfaces of the requisite materials. For unresearched reasons, the spell works better with raw earth or stone than worked materials. Hardness of spikes depends on practice and mana. Number, thickness, and length depend on the caster's image or preset designations. 

Echo: Sends magic out in a 3D sphere from the caster. The spell acts similar to sonar and is a higher-level spell than Ripple. It can penetrate walls, floors, ceilings, and other thick or heavy structures. What materials can be penetrated and their thickness is determined by the level of the skill and mana of the caster. The diameter of the searched area, and duration of the spell if not canceled, also depend on the mana of the caster. Experienced casters often "flatten" the sphere to divert more mana to detecting objects along the horizontal plane, depending on the environment.

Identification of detected objects depends on the experience of the caster. Echo can also penetrate wards and magic barriers; the effectiveness depends on the level, skill, and experience of the Echo caster vs that of the ward caster.

It is difficult to use Echo in battle; not only does using it require multicasting at at least x2 so the mage can continue to fight or support, the caster must spare attention to sort through the received images. 

Ripple: Sends out magic around the caster, similar to how water ripples out from a dropped stone. While not strictly 2D, as the caster can usually send out waves from a 30 cm tall to their height depending on their skill and level, it does exist strictly on a horizontal plane. It is a lower-level spell than Echo and is easily blocked by barriers, both magic and non-magic. Diameter and height depends on skill level and mana, duration if not canceled depends on mana. Identification of detected objects depends on the experience of the caster. Ripple can detect magic wards and barriers, but not penetrate them. It is considered a fairly easy spell, and many adventurers of Ruby level or above learn it along with basic elemental magic.

Items, magical:

Bolat crystal: Monster stones from monsters Sapphire level and up, or artificially produced equivalent crystals. When Bolat visits, its energy can be stored in these crystals and accessed later. When the energy is accessed, it can mutate and corrupt living beings and locations far faster and more thoroughly than corrupted magic can. Finding a large stash of good quality crystals with plenty of energy led to the rise of the Demon King four hundred years before the story.

Items, non-magical:

Dice piece: Owned by Elmerin. A twenty-sided die made in the style of Earth's role-playing dice by one of the Summoned and gifted to the priest Meinz as a sign of friendship and thanks. Disappeared when Meinz did.

Green sunstone: An ordinary type of gemstone, though less common than its yellow, orange, or red counterparts.

Animals:

Seps: A snake with corrosive venom. Usually red with yellow markings, but black and white morphs exist. Gets particularly nasty when monsterized. Mostly found in deserts and the lower reaches of mountains in hot climates.

Organizations:

Crimson Seps Cult: A somewhat nutty but very dangerous cult that started from a few fanatics that believed Summoned who obtained snake- and reptile- themed weapons and/or powers were avatars of a formerly unknown deity or deities that weren't part of the primary trio of Idalin, Vikesh, and Bolat. (None of the Summoned so venerated encouraged this, and most found it outright creepy.) They believed adventurers' destruction of monsters to be against the will of their gods (who were mostly distorted versions of the reptilian-themed Summoned) and that killing them is a welcome sacrifice to their god(s). Mysteriously and completely wiped out 15-20 years before the story begins.